KARACHI: The Commonwealth Journalists Association has expressed its shock over the kidnapping of Shyamal Dutta, Editor of Bangladesh’s Bhorer Kagoj newspaper and a vice president of the CJA, along with two colleagues by unidentified militants on Sept 15.

The executive committee of CJA, in a statement on Thursday, recalled that the three journalists were robbed by the gang, but police detained Shyamal and his colleagues and charged them with murder.

Shyamal is currently on a seven-day remand.

He is among 52 journalists who have been similarly charged, while at least five journalists are known to have been killed in the past seven weeks.

“We consider this wave of killings, violent attacks, acts of intimidation and arrests to be a grave indictment of the state of legitimate media freedoms in Bangladesh,” said the statement.

“We call on Mohammad Yunus, a Nobel laureate and head of the interim government of Bangladesh, to ensure that Dutta and other arrested journalists are immediately released without being maltreated or victimised, and these trumped-up charges against them dropped.”

Published in Dawn, September 21st, 2024